Trust is very hard for me, too.

I did learn to trust, though... I had a really great T who said that one just has to make the decision to trust, and that if I would decide to trust him he would do everything in his power to be worthy of my trust. It took several months but I did eventually become willing to trust him, and he was very careful not to let me down. That was the first person I was able to trust (I was 16). That was a good experience.

The way I handle trusting other people is very similar to the way I handle tipping at restaurants. When I walk into the restaurant, the server's tip starts out at 15% and it goes up or down from there, depending on the service. If the service is adequate the tips stays at 15%. If the service is good, the tip goes up accordingly. The tip goes down proportionately to the problems if the service is bad.

So every new person I meet I start out giving them my trust, to a reasonable degree.

If their words and actions show they are trustworthy then my trust increases over time in response.

If they act in untrustworthy ways, then my level of trust goes down a notch for every time they fail me / let me down. When something happens and I hear that little 'ding, ding,ding' of warning in my head I review the situation and my response, to make sure I'm seeing the situation / my response clearly. If I'm not sure then I try to check out my perceptions with a friend to make sure I'm being reasonable. Once I feel that I'm seeing clearly if they let me down then my level of trust decreases. Multiple incidents cause multiple trust decreases and if things get bad enough then I don't trust that person at all anymore.

Unfortunately, even though I'm willing to start out trusting people (basically), I meet very few people who I feel I can trust over time. With most of the people I meet things start out OK and then go downhill from there.

Part of that is probably due to my inability to tolerate dishonesty in any form. If I can't be honest with people, and/or I figure out they are not being honest with me, I am not going to be able to trust that person. I am a person who says what they mean and means what they say. In order to trust other people I need them to operate at that same level of accountability. From what I can tell that is difficult for most people to maintain...

Good news: I am able to trust some people, some of them have been men, some have been women. There are people who do their best to be trustworthy, it just depends of the person.

Everyday reality: I find it hard to trust most people, my standard of trustworthiness is apparently too stringent for most people to live up to